FULL TIME
*****
Director: Éric Gravel
Screenplay: Éric Gravel
Principal cast:
Laure Calamy
Anne Suarez
Geneviéve Mnich
Nolan Arizmendi
Sasha Lemaiter Cremaschi
Cyril Gueï
Country: France
Classification: M
Runtime: 88mins.
Australian release date: 28 July 2022.
Éric Gravel’s incredibly tense drama Full Time is an exceptionally white-knuckle experience, so it comes as no surprise to learn that the director and the lead actor, Laure Calamy, won the Best Director and the Best Actress Awards in the Venice Film Festival’s Horizons section last year. Calamy’s performance is a far cry from her comedic role in Antoinette in the Cévennes, which was popular at last year’s French Film Festival in Australia. Along with her acclaimed part as Noémie Leclerc in television’s Call My Agent, Calamy is a deserving favourite on both big and small screens at the moment.
Julie Roy (Laure Calamy) is a single mother of two living in a village outside Paris, employed as a head chambermaid in a five-star hotel in the centre of the city. Every day she rises while it’s still dark, leaves her kids in the hands of an elderly neighbour and races against time to get to her job, a journey that involves train, bus and metro travel. The opening scenes reveal how incredibly organised yet frantic her life is; initially, we see her asleep in bed but it’s the last bit of tranquillity she has. While en route to work one day, an announcement is made by the transport authorities that France is about to undergo a nation-wide railway strike and Julie’s highly-organised world begins to fall apart. To add to her difficulties, she is attempting to attend an interview for a better job and has to wangle the time off and, in doing so, is forced to compromise one of her work colleagues. She has no other choice as her boss at the hotel does not forgive the slightest tardiness or allow any flexibility in Julie’s shifts.
Gravel’s film, which he also wrote, vividly and authentically portrays Julie’s daily race against the clock as his screenplay follows her for a single week while she becomes more and more desperate, urgently seeking alternative ways of getting to work and to her job interview. The sense of chaos increases when riots break out in the streets and transport workers and others begin to protest against state and city policies. All the while, though, Gravel’s focus remains resolutely fixed on Julie. The director explains, “Everything starts breaking down everywhere - in the image of what is happening to my leading character, I wanted the individual and collective struggles to follow parallel courses for us to gradually understand that they are connected, that they tell the same story, that one is the consequence of the other.” Calamy is superb as the fraught single mum who only wants to provide a safe and sane environment for her children, whatever it takes. She never portrays Julie as a victim - she plays her as a woman who somehow manages to keep it together in a world that has little regard for her. She’s a warrior.
Full Time features a suitably frenetic soundtrack by electronic composer Irène Drésel, which heightens the tension; often racing along at what feels like 120 BPM, it puts your heart in your mouth (you can hear her work on YouTube). Gravel says, “I knew from the writing stage that I wanted an electro soundtrack, whose repetitive beat would reflect [Julie’s] inner throbbing, the tempo and the repetitiveness of her own life.” Throw in Mathilde Van de Moortel’s vigorous editing and the grey palette of Victor Seguin’s cinematography and you’ve got yourself a pretty savage exposé of capitalism and the toll it takes on workers on the lower rungs of the employment ladder. Gravel shows how unrelentingly brutal everyday life can be for those who work in a system that insists on taking advantage of them. And yet, in the midst of this dog-eat-dog scenario, Full Time also shows great acts of solidarity from some of the characters as they help each other out, offering assistance, picking up hitchhikers, delivering supplies and so on. Despite its premise, Gravel’s astounding and exhausting film manages to leave you with a modicum of hope for the future - if not for ours then, at least, for Julie’s.
Screenplay: Éric Gravel
Principal cast:
Laure Calamy
Anne Suarez
Geneviéve Mnich
Nolan Arizmendi
Sasha Lemaiter Cremaschi
Cyril Gueï
Country: France
Classification: M
Runtime: 88mins.
Australian release date: 28 July 2022.
Éric Gravel’s incredibly tense drama Full Time is an exceptionally white-knuckle experience, so it comes as no surprise to learn that the director and the lead actor, Laure Calamy, won the Best Director and the Best Actress Awards in the Venice Film Festival’s Horizons section last year. Calamy’s performance is a far cry from her comedic role in Antoinette in the Cévennes, which was popular at last year’s French Film Festival in Australia. Along with her acclaimed part as Noémie Leclerc in television’s Call My Agent, Calamy is a deserving favourite on both big and small screens at the moment.
Julie Roy (Laure Calamy) is a single mother of two living in a village outside Paris, employed as a head chambermaid in a five-star hotel in the centre of the city. Every day she rises while it’s still dark, leaves her kids in the hands of an elderly neighbour and races against time to get to her job, a journey that involves train, bus and metro travel. The opening scenes reveal how incredibly organised yet frantic her life is; initially, we see her asleep in bed but it’s the last bit of tranquillity she has. While en route to work one day, an announcement is made by the transport authorities that France is about to undergo a nation-wide railway strike and Julie’s highly-organised world begins to fall apart. To add to her difficulties, she is attempting to attend an interview for a better job and has to wangle the time off and, in doing so, is forced to compromise one of her work colleagues. She has no other choice as her boss at the hotel does not forgive the slightest tardiness or allow any flexibility in Julie’s shifts.
Gravel’s film, which he also wrote, vividly and authentically portrays Julie’s daily race against the clock as his screenplay follows her for a single week while she becomes more and more desperate, urgently seeking alternative ways of getting to work and to her job interview. The sense of chaos increases when riots break out in the streets and transport workers and others begin to protest against state and city policies. All the while, though, Gravel’s focus remains resolutely fixed on Julie. The director explains, “Everything starts breaking down everywhere - in the image of what is happening to my leading character, I wanted the individual and collective struggles to follow parallel courses for us to gradually understand that they are connected, that they tell the same story, that one is the consequence of the other.” Calamy is superb as the fraught single mum who only wants to provide a safe and sane environment for her children, whatever it takes. She never portrays Julie as a victim - she plays her as a woman who somehow manages to keep it together in a world that has little regard for her. She’s a warrior.
Full Time features a suitably frenetic soundtrack by electronic composer Irène Drésel, which heightens the tension; often racing along at what feels like 120 BPM, it puts your heart in your mouth (you can hear her work on YouTube). Gravel says, “I knew from the writing stage that I wanted an electro soundtrack, whose repetitive beat would reflect [Julie’s] inner throbbing, the tempo and the repetitiveness of her own life.” Throw in Mathilde Van de Moortel’s vigorous editing and the grey palette of Victor Seguin’s cinematography and you’ve got yourself a pretty savage exposé of capitalism and the toll it takes on workers on the lower rungs of the employment ladder. Gravel shows how unrelentingly brutal everyday life can be for those who work in a system that insists on taking advantage of them. And yet, in the midst of this dog-eat-dog scenario, Full Time also shows great acts of solidarity from some of the characters as they help each other out, offering assistance, picking up hitchhikers, delivering supplies and so on. Despite its premise, Gravel’s astounding and exhausting film manages to leave you with a modicum of hope for the future - if not for ours then, at least, for Julie’s.